Used plastic masks are landing on California beaches and authorities are fearful that microplastics will seep into seafood, such as shrimp, crab and fish.
“What we know of plastics are that they break into smaller and smaller pieces and eventually into microplastics, which stick around forever and unfortunately sea life consume them,” said Ian Monahan, marketing manager for the 36th Annual I Love a Clean San Diego’s Coastal Cleanup Day. “That’s how it works its way into the food system.”
Volunteers reported 2,423 plastic masks in their litter count during this year’s clean up on Sept. 26, according to I Love a Clean San Diego data.
Girl scouts picking up litter on the beach on Sept. 26
| I Love a Clean San Diego
“It’s not systemic mask dumping,” Monahan told the Southern California Record. “It's the proliferation of masks that have popped up. Last year, we didn't have these in our litter counts. Consumers are disposing of these at the rate of 200 billion per month around the globe. So, these masks are in some cases making it into the proper disposal bins but unfortunately many are not and we're finding them around the communities.”
Gov. Newsom is partly to blame, according to media reports, because he reportedly signed a nearly $1 billion deal to purchase 200 million masks a month from China and other countries.
“What we've said all along is that measures were made to help people be safe, to ensure their safety and get proper protection,” Monahan said in an interview. “That was the top priority. The proliferation of the use of disposable masks is absolutely a direct correlation to the amount of litter that we are seeing in the streets.”
Due to COVID-19 and social distancing, volunteers self-reported their data this year in close-to-home cleanups, according to Monahan. In previous years, it was the agency that weighed and sorted the pollution collected on clean up day before it was discarded.
“There are 11 watersheds in our County and they all flow to a beach or to a bay at the end of the day,” he said. “So, that's the emphasis on protecting the watershed from litter and pollution.”
The California Department of Public Health reported 810,625 coronavirus cases and 15,792 fatalities as of Sept. 30.
Monahan is also concerned about take-out packaging and thin plastic grocery store bags, known as urban tumbleweed, being back in use. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California prohibited single-use plastic bags at retail stores in 2014.
“I believe it was felt that the plastic bags were the cheapest most sanitary way to keep what was perceived as a potential contaminant out of the stores for the time being,” Monahan said. “So, I don't know that the ban was necessarily forgotten. It was a response to how can we most readily respond to the need to keep things as sanitized as possible.”